This is one of those previews. I’m hesitant to post pictures that are out of context but had to spotlight some of the points that made my gut churn, tears well and heart beat just a mite faster.

Tomorrow is the release of Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye issue 12. 1 year in and I’m in love with the comic and characters. It’s getting pretty hard to watch some of the things James Roberts, Alex Milne and Josh Burcham are putting these guys through.

The whole 5 page preview can be found at FullMetalHero courtesy of IDW Publishing.

Panel pic #1:

Magnus is taking on Hun-Gurr on the left, stomping some dino-con underfoot, shooting one guy on the right and launching two missiles – all at the same moment – and after transforming too. Yep, “he is really good at fighting.”

I love this main panel – it shows the gloriousness of comics in one image – it could be considered a still image, but it also clearly shows a passage of time (vehicle, multiple attacks, movement, smooshing). And you can’t beat Swerve and Tailgate watching from afar.

Panel pic #2:

Snaptrap gets on panel briefly before getting a sword shluckted through the back of his head. Guess which Autobot did that?

I love comic sound effects. This one is nicely masked within the image too.

Okay. This one is REALLY out of context, so you may lose the impact I felt. The third panel is from Page 4, and it is a character i’ve particularly enjoyed so far this series – Swerve. He’s a fast talking, joke-cracking bar man who has gone through a lot this year. Now look at him…

Panel pic #3:

Swerve!!! How did this happen!!! He doesn’t have a face. Is he alive? Unconscious? The preview doesn’t reveal this but just hits me smack in the gut with this image. It’s haunting.

I’m back! The school year is about to end, so i’m going to make sure more blogs happen! At least one or two people will read them. 2013 will bring more awesome Transformers comics to read, and also news of my own comics too!

This past week saw the release of the latest issue of Transformers: Regeneration One (#86) and it launches the next story arc from Simon Furman and Andy Wildman. Lots of buzz about this comic, which is of course linked to the TF81 petition that I co-ordinated last year with wild success. (We still have a facebook page running with updates here). I’m going down to Phantom Zone this weekend sometime to grab it, and then i’ll listen to The Underbase review!

The awesome gang at “The Underbase” podcast have reviewed the comic and I recommend you check it out. These guys do amazing reviews of all the Transformers comics, and coupled with the fact that this year the quality has been excellent, they’re a joy to listen to! Go to fullmetalhero and follow the link. You can also subscribe on iTunes really easy. Plug in “the underbase” and you’ll be set. They regularly do interviews with the comic pro’s too, so check it out.

You may be wondering why i’m plugging The Underbase so much. Well, aside from their awesomeness, I also co-moderate the IDW Transformers forums with Ladywreck – but more importantly, when listening to their review of Transformers: Robots in Disguise #11 last week I had some real contrasting views to co-host Matt’s position on the issue. Coming in my next blog!

How much can one rave about a comic? Let me tell you, the internet has not seen enough!!!

Aside from being content-filled, mystery-induced, spark-eating, Transformer-lovingly awesome, More Than Meets The Eye is a great comic.

A group of Autobots and friends, led by Rodimus (formerly known as Hot Rod), set off to find the ancient, mythological “Knights of Cybertron.” And their ship is called the “Lost Light.”

Well, here’s my question:

How can this ship NOT be a Transformer, in disguise?

On the right: Head, complete with helmet, visor, chin, beard and hair

On the left: torso, 4 limbs (1 obscured by “hair”), hands and feet

IT’S ALL THERE PEOPLE!

We have not seen many zoomed out shots of the ship, but I’ve included 3 of the key ones here, and in the second two in this post I believe it’s clear that we can see a helmet/visor over a face and the rear could easily be limbs.

Now it has to be said, James, Alex, Josh and Nick are masters at what they’re doing in this story. There are so many twists and turns that the fans are speculating about which character is Agent 113, who are the DJD and WHO PUT OVERLORD IN THE BASEMENT?!?

So, I guess I could be going waaaay out there with this one, though, if anyone had a secret plan for the ship their on to be a Transformer, it’d be these guys!

Check this out: this panel it has a NOSE AND MOUTH!!!

Sooo… yeah. The Lost Light is enjoying it’s not-so-quiet journey with a radical crew. What is it going to take to spark this thing back to life?

It was only 5 short years ago that the first live action Transformers film hit cinemas world-wide and introduced a global audience to Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Megatron and co.

At that point I still felt like somewhat of a novice in the geek world. It was only back in 2004 that I really started collecting comics, following superhero movie hype online and buying whatever Transformer toys took my fancy. Good times.

The 80’s nostalgia boom was mid-stream, and I gradually became part of the online community of fans through Don Murphy’s website and forums. A few other websites caught my eye for good movie and comics news and I browse their quite often. But In 2006-7 IDW Publishing launched their first series of Transformer comics and I was more than ready to dive in.

It’s now 2012 and IDW have expanded the universe with two monthly Transformers books and I’m wholeheartedly on board. In fact an expansion of their series was something I thought should happen, and this year has been perfect timing. The response from fans has been overwhelmingly positive, with plenty of constructive thoughts because like all art, there are plenty of tastes in comics.

The two series (‘Robots in Disguise’ and ‘More Than Meets the Eye’) are quite simply amazing. Thematic, classic, psychological, witty, political, dramatic, violent, touching and heart-wrenching.

Over the next month I will be blogging a series of posts exploring both ‘Robots in Disguise’ and ‘More Than Meets The Eye’ as well as a very extensive analysis of EVERY panel and narrative balloon in contemporary Transformers comic in the past two or so years vs other mainstream series. That one has taken me 7 months to develop!

So if you enjoy Transformers and comics, these will be especially for you! And if you’re not, then they will be even more so for you as I convince you of the glorious narratives that are being weaves by IDW Publishing!

Today is Free Comic Book Day. The first Saturday in May over the past few years has been filled with fun when I take Isabella and Melissa down to my local comic shop, Phantom Zone, and the FCBD comics are out on the tables and they have great sales and it’s just a fun vibe.

This is an international celebration of comics and not enough people I know get into it. For a simple trip down to Parramatta so many people I know could check out the stories of the characters they love to watch in movies in their original context.

This year though, is something special.

From late March 2011 through to June I co-promoted and ran an online petition requesting comic publishers IDW Publishing to bring back the original Transformers comics series by writer Simon Furman.

It wasn’t until San Diego Comic Con that they said anything publicly – and they announced that they were going to do a 20 issue run with Furman AND artist Andrew Wildman.

Many of my blog readers know all about this. We got lots of fan artists and pro’s doing promotional pieces of art that helped to promote the petition. We had a Facebook page and twitter account and put flyers in our comic shops. We even had some news sites report about the petition.

And now it’s FCBD 2012 and the first issue, a prologue issue 80.5 is here!

I sincerely hope that all the fans that supported the petition get out there and grab a copy and try to take as many friends in to get one as well!

The series starts in June at #81 and I can’t wait to see where the creative team will take the series!

This January, three (yep, three) new Transformer comics are being launched by IDW Publishing and look very exciting.

In fact, More than meets the eye #1 (MTMTE) came out last week and had quite a bit of buzz surrounding it, including a fun picture treasure hunt that had lots of fans scowering the net for the twelve of them.

Robots In Disguise is launched next week on the 25th (26th here in Aus) from senior editor/writer John Barber and artist Andrew Griffith (see Glove Studios).

However, I want to point your attention to a new, very special comic coming this week!
IDW are launching their first digital only transformers comic, Autocracy.
From the minds of Flint Dille (classic transformers writer), Chris Metzthen (blizzard!) and über-artist Livio Ramondelli (Transformers: Chaos – find him on twitter @livioramondelli) comes a story featuring Optimus Prime, Megatron and amongst others.

It is set in the past, during the beginning of the war between autobot and decepticon and will be the only place to see Megatron and Optimus in comics for a while.

Also, it will only cost 99c for each issue, it’s 8 pages long and coming out bi-weekly for about half the year!!!

I’m really excited by this, and IDW put out a cool plug over the weekend (see below).

So, if you have ea computer, iPad, iPhone, or iPod I would check this out this week!!!

People following IDW’s Transformers comics for a while would know that in January they are continuing the ongoing by expanding it into TWO ongoings. Coming out of events in “CHAOS” (going right now to December) the story brings a natural split in the characters and so my dreams of a larger ongoing IDW Transformers universe are being fulfilled.

Ever since Simon Furman seeded so many plot threads back in Infiltration/Escalation/Devastation/Revelation I have hoped that IDW would be able to do this. And now we have it, and with AWESOME creative teams behind the launch.

John Barber and Andrew Griffith will be launching Transformers: Robots in Disguise and James Roberts and Nick Roche are behind Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye.

The internet is buzzing with this news so head to these links for a peak at more art and info!!! BEWARE: SPOILERS!

Today there are some big things announced, released and happening in the world of comics!

HAPPENING: IDW Publishing on Comixology

IDW Publishing, who I’ve been a big fan of since they grabbed the Transformers license in 2007, have now linked with Comixology and have their titles available for digital download on their website and apps. I have been using Comixology regularly for a couple of months now, especially for DC’s New 52 comics (see below) and it’s great to see that IDW now have their wonderful comics here.

RELEASED: This week’s comics

I bought Green Lantern #2 but Ultimate Comics Spider-man #3 stood out the most today.

First of all it has a letter printed by Paul Allor (find him on twitter), the writer of Clockwork vol 1 (check it here) and a fellow alumni of Comics Experience!

I’ve seen a few reviews that comment on Bendis’ use of decompressed storytelling, but the first 3 issues of UCSM have got me HOOKED! The team creating this comic put their all into it and I loved watching Miles’ first foray into life-saving, and he was successful too. It’s lining up nicely with the Ultimate Universe timeline, fitting neatly in to past events with some references here and pushing it forward now. Can’t wait for #4.

Did you miss IDW’s first monster event series “Infestation” earlier this year? Well, there’s a mega hardcover coming out and trades already available that you can get up to speed on as INFESTATION 2 is coming (with Lovecraftian creatures in tow) next year! In fact, it’s only months away, releasing from February with a number of tie-in mini-series (like Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles amongst others) being released.

Of particular interest to me is the 2 issues of INFESTATION: Transformers taking place in the Hearts of Steel universe, created by Chuck Dixon and Guido Guidi for the first (and so far, only) Transformers Evolutions series, released a number of years ago. This opens up a world of possibilities that won’t step on the toes of the regular Transformers series (that will only really be getting going after the release of two ongoing series in January).

Tonight I’ll post up some of the first Inkman art I received! It blew my mind seeing character designs come in, I can’t wait to share it.

Most of my friends offline and online know I’m a bit of a nut for Transformers. I’m sure it’s part of the way God made me – that I’m still a “child at heart.” However, even though I enjoyed Transformers (the cartoon and toys) as a kid and raced home to watch Beast Wars (instead of doing homework), I only REALLY LOVED Transformers fiction as an adult when I could invest my own money into the property. Buying dvd’s, toys and comics with my own hard-earned cash was great. It stirred my parents to no end and my then girlfriend, now awesome wife, supported me (read: didn’t mind all that much).

Through this experience I became involved with the online Transformers fan community. There’s a whole journey there that I’ve taken, but this year marked a particular personal experience with Transformers and the wonderful creators and publishers that make them.

I’ve been lucky enough to moderate on IDW Publishings own forum’s twice (on their old board and recently “appointed” again by Comics Experience founder Andy Schmidt) and through this set up some fan Q+A’s with uber-Transformers comics writer Simon Furman. As every fan that has met him can attest to, Simon is a really excellent guy to interact with, chat to, gush over and even though we’ve only ever communicated through email he’s always been happy to give of his time to respond to our fan community in this way.

So then came the question of TRANSFORMERS #81. There are a number of links out there – Newsarama.com posted about it and I created a facebook page and twitter account – but the story is that creators Andy Wildman and Simon Furman were interested in continuing the original Marvel comics continuity of Transformers, but publishers IDW Publishing apparently weren’t quite sold on that idea.

[Note: I’ve always personally maintained that IDW’s run of TF comics have always displayed a desire to honour and extend the history of Transformers, and have often exceeded fans’ expectations – the goal of the petition was for Transformers #81 to be additional to any current Transformers comics output]

After this Q+A revealed that the creators were keen, the fans that read this started to murmur “hey, we’re keen, they’re keen, why isn’t this happened last month already?”

A friend on the IDW forums, Ron (a.k.a ‘DecepticonsRule’), started to chat about how we could catch the mood online in a very real way to show IDW there was an audience for a renewed “classics” Transformers series. I suggested a petition (amongst a swathe of other social harassment tools – I don’t I had anyone unfriend me because of this…) and it took off.

In April this year the petition went live and we bombarded as many forums, fan sites, twitter feeds and facebook pages as we could.

I very quickly whipped up a petition flyer that fans could download and photocopy to place in their local comic shop for all to see, comic stores were extremely supportive too and so were the current professional and fan artists that also loved the classic series.

Without too much wrangling, some awesome people GAVE us artwork to use to promote the petition. People like Josh Burcham, Guido Guidi, Kris Carter, Andrew Turnbull and many more – gave their time and talent to this cause. I cannot thank them enough. (Last thing to be created was a DeviantArt account to display the amazing talent and efforts – link!)

The first fortnight was huge, we received hundreds of ‘signatures’ proclaiming a love of the original series and that they would generously hand over money for this product!

I can’t remember the exact timeline but the petition reached almost 3000 signatures in about two months.

IDW Publishing heard (Chris Ryall has been very patient with me filling up his twitter feed – cheers!) and at San Diego Comic-Con 2011 they announced that Simon Furman and Andy Wildman would be producing Transformers #81* 20-issue series in 2012.

Not only have IDW continued to employ amazing creators on their own IDW-verse of Transformers comics (looking ahead to TWO ongoings launching in January 2012 is EPIC!) they have also backed a return to the classic rendition of the characters WITH the same creators (of course, this does not discount the efforts of multiple artists of the series).

Amongst the whirlwind of the excitement over this announcement was when I really started to reflect on what had happened essentially under our fingertips. With DecepticonsRule suggesting to me that we could actually get this thing going and his efforts with personal messages across forums, I wouldn’t have thought much about Simon’s response. And I realized why.

I didn’t grow up with this series.

Yep. It wasn’t the first comics or transformers stuff I loved, or even knew much about, and even as an adult fan I was too busy catching up to really get into everything of the 80’s. I think watching the four seasons of the cartoon drained me a bit? 😉

The nostalgia that so many fans had that they brought to support the petition wasn’t there for me.

It was the opportunity. I knew I could do the petition. This year I was in the unique position with my job that I actually had the time outside of work to fiddle with facebook/twitter harassment without avoiding marking students’ work. What I realized was that back in April I could leap at this thing and let the fans have an opportunity to tell IDW Publishing that we wanted something ADDITIONAL to what they were already doing, if they would simply produce it (ha, of course, not as simple as that I know). It seemed that we all just needed a place to let them know about it!

I honestly thought that the petition would have had to run at least until the end of the year. I was thinking about a short animated video promotion. I have a professional voice actor friend who was gonna help me with it. I hadn’t done any of that stuff before but it was exciting. But two months later, Chris Ryall and IDW Publishing made a whole bunch of fans dreams come true and gave the reigns of the perhaps long-overlooked but definitely not forgotten series of Transformers, with its untimely finish at #80 (it did reach over 300 issues in the UK).

With 2012 fast approaching I cannot wait the official release date of Furman and Wildman’s Transformers #81 from IDW Publishing, and I hope that everyone that signed the petition (and more!) heads out to buy this comic!!!

Roll out!

Luke

*The official title of this series is yet to be confirmed, there have been some reprints under the banner “Transformers Classics”.